"That was a quieter directly, you see; for they were all more or less in his power from being behindhand. Houses and lodgings for poor people are dreadful scarce in London, and landlords and tenants knows it; and folks will put up with anything sooner than have to move. And that's just how it was in this house--people grumbled and bore it; till one morning down it came with a rush, and three or four were killed dead, and ever so many cut up all sorts of ways. But, there, that ain't nothing new, bless you. We are used to that sort of thing in these courts. "It was about seven o'clock in the morning, I should say, and fortunately some had got up and gone to work; but working at home on the piece, I wasn't so particular to half an hour; but I was lying there thinking of rousing out, when all at once I heard a sharp, loud crack, and then another and another, followed by a curious rushing noise, and by a shriek or two. For a moment or two I thought it was thunder, and I lay quite still; then came a rattling down of rubbish, and I saw the end wall of my room seem to bulge gently out, when there was a fierce rumbling crash, and I was hanging to a broken beam sticking out of the wall, clinging to it with bleeding hands, ready to drop each moment on to the jagged pile of ruins underneath me--a good thirty feet, and from which now came slowly up a thick cloud of dust, and from out of it every now and then a shriek or a groan. "I dare say, you know, at another time I could have hung there some minutes, but now a terrible sort of fear came over me which made me weak; and after looking about as well as I could for help, to see nothing but the dust rising from the heap under me, as I hung over the gap where the house had stood a few minutes before--after looking round once or twice, I seemed to shudder like, and then down I went crash on to the ruins, to be one of the first picked up. "I lay there, though, for some time, waiting for help; nobody daring to come, till one man crept through the window of the next house on to the heap of rubbish, though he had to dart back once or twice; for now one of the joists left sticking in the wall up above would fall, then a few tiles and some bricks that had been lingering in their places for a few minutes, came down to make matters worse. The end of one joist caught me right on the side of the head, and sent what little sense there was left in flying out; and the next time I opened my eyes it was in the hospital, with some one doing something to my head, and me feeling sick, and dull, and sleepy as could be.